


Doug Eiffel and the quest for Christmas decorations

by Donthavesexwithsam



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, EVERYTHING GOES WRONG, terrible fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 16:57:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5424749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donthavesexwithsam/pseuds/Donthavesexwithsam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjoy this one-shot that I wrote pretending everything was okay on the USS Hephaestus. Also- Christmas is coming!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doug Eiffel and the quest for Christmas decorations

“But, Hera!” Eiffel protested.

“ _I don’t know why you’re trying to debate with me, Officer Eiffel, because Commander Minkowski made the announcement._ ” Hera, as always, had no time to argue. “ _You should take this discussion to her._ ”

Eiffel rolled his eyes and pressed the ‘call’ button on his radio, opening a line to Minkowski’s receiver. “But, Commander!”

“ _What is it now, Eiffel?_ ” Minkowski seemed to be chronically annoyed at him.

“I have some concerns about…” Eiffel started.

“ _Cut the crap,_ ” Minkowski sighed. “ _What do you need?_ ”

“This whole… Christmas-thing.” Eiffel groaned. “Could you, you know, relieve me? If I take over the cleaning shift after dinner...?”

“ _There’s no way to get out of this, Eiffel,_ ” Minkowski said.

“Come on, Commander!” Eiffel threw his hands in the air. “I didn't sign up for this!”

“ _Actually, you did,_ ” Minkowski said, slyly. “ _So get it going._ ”

She hung up, loudly.

“You heard it, dear listeners,” Eiffel said sadly, “There is no way to escape the great Christmas Nightmare. Our commander holds dearly to her ‘protocol’.”

He picked his radio back up again. “Let's see how the ghost of Christmas Evil is feeling about the dictator’s sentiment.”

He dialed the number that would connect him to the lab, where Hilbert usually was. The doctor didn’t pick up, and Eiffel dialed again.

“Where is he?” He mumbled under his breath.

There was a knock at his door, and a heavy: “Officer Eiffel?” to answer his question.

“Ah!” Eiffel exclaimed. “Speak of the Devil! Doctor, how can I help you?”

“Can I come in?” Hilbert asked. “I need to speak with you. In private.”

Eiffel got up. “What's up, Doc,” he winked.

Hilbert frowned.

“From… Never mind.” Eiffel shook his head. “Did someone steal your candy?”

“I came here to discuss the violent manner in which Commander Minkowski forces us to celebrate Christmas.” Hilbert said. “It seemed appropriate to me if we set up something nice, to surprise her.”

Eiffel tried to raise an eyebrow, and comically failed to do so. Now he had both his eyebrows pulled up in a pained grimace as he said; “And why the sudden _fraternité_?”

“I need security clearance for an experiment,” Hilbert sighed.

“I knew there was a catch!” Eiffel grinned. “But sure, I’m in. I mean, anything to needlessly upset Minkowski by keeping secrets. What did you have in mind?”

“I made a flaky-like fake snow we can pump through the sprinklers in the cargo bay. We could make a winter wonderland and surprise her with that before Christmas dinner.”

“Two questions. One- will the fake snow give us first degree chemical burns, yes or no?”

“Most likely not…” Hilbert shrugged.

“ _Yes or no,_ Doctor Hilbert?” Eiffel asked.

“No,” Hilbert replied. He didn’t sound very confident, though. “Next question.”

“Can you make me a mountain to go sledding?”

“You’ll need gravity for that.” Hilbert shook his head. “So no again.”

“Dang it.” Eiffel swore.

“ _Can I do anything to help?_ ” Hera asked. “ _I mean, this sounds like the sweetest thing you boys did for Minkowski since… Well… Since ever._ ”

“You can keep the commander busy,” Hilbert proposed. “While Eiffel and I start working on decorations, you keep her out of the cargo bay.”

“ _On it!_ ” She said. Hera's programming made it so that she always sounded upbeat, but now she really seemed happy. And at least slightly malicious.

“I think there should be some Christmas hats in the storage room,” Eiffel proposed. “We could put those on. And how did you plan to ‘let it snow’ in here?”

“Ventilators.” Hilbert grinned. “It won't exactly stick to the ground, but I could magnetize the particles to make them…”

“Doctor!” Eiffel said. “Don't overdo it.”

Hilbert shook his head. “No, sorry.”

With that, Eiffel went on his way to the storage room. “Looks like today's log is turning into something of an adventure, dear listeners,” he said. “Communications Officer Doug Eiffel and the quest for Christmas decorations! I don’t know if I’ve told you guys before, but I have about seven conspiracy theories running, Hilbert being inherently evil in five of them, and in the other two I’m either on a really bad acid trip or someone drugged me. Either way, life here is a very vivid hallucination, because honestly, there is no way that the ludicrous condition of the Hephaestus is coincidental.”

Eiffel entered the storage room. “There's no way I’m going to find those things on my own. Hera?”

“ _How can I help you, Officer Eiffel?_ ” Her voice beamed through the speaker.

“Is there anything labeled ‘Christmas’ in here?”

Hera was silent for a moment, while she was searching the log.

“ _To the right, in the back. Box 420._ ” She said after a while.

Eiffel made his way to the box, tucked in a corner. He opened it.

“There’s even party poppers in here,” he picked one up and shook it, “I have no idea if these work in space, though.”

He quickly got the Christmas hats and some more decorations, but hesitated at the sight of a plastic mistletoe. “Waddya think, Hera?” he asked. “Should we hang that one on the ceiling?”

“ _According to station protocol, I believe it would be wildly inappropriate for any of you to kiss anyone aboard the Hephaestus._ ” Hera said.

“Yes, but where’s the fun?” Eiffel grinned. “Anyway, I certainly have no desire to kiss Doctor Hilbert, and I firmly believe kissing Minkowski will actually turn me into stone…”

“ _That was Medusa, Officer Eiffel,_ ” Hera corrected him. “ _And she turned people into stone by looking at them, not…_ ”

“I was joking, Hera,” Eiffel sighed.

“ _Joking incorrectly,_ ” Hera sighed back, slightly sarcastically.

On his way out, Eiffel found some crafting supplies in another box. Paper, some string and a few markers. He dug a roll of duct tape out from somewhere and thought it might be a good idea to make a banner that said; ‘Merry Christmas Minkowski!’, only, when he got to the first ‘S’ in ‘Christmas’, he discovered that there wasn’t enough paper. He settled for ‘Merry Christmas!’, but the last four letters of the word ‘Christmas’ were jammed together on the last piece of paper.

Eiffel studied the result of his creative outburst. “Let’s get back to the cargo bay. How’s the distraction going?”

“ _Fine…_ ” Hera sounded hesitant.

“Hera?” Eiffel asked. “C’mon…”

“ _I may or may not caused a minor malfunction in the climate control system._ ” She admitted. “ _To keep Commander Minkowski busy._ ”

“And...?” Eiffel urged.

“ _And now the current room temperature in the bridge, the room in which Commander Minkowski is attempting to fix the heating, is one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit,_ ” Hera said.

“Can nothing ever go right?” Eiffel mumbled, annoyed, as he re-entered the cargo bay. “Hilbert? How are things going… Oh my God.”

Upon entering the cargo bay, Christmas hats in hand, he stumbled upon the greatest mess since… Well, probably since Eiffel knocked over a box filled with foam peanuts.

It was a large box, and it had taken the three of them hours to clean everything up.

Sometimes, Minkowski would still find a piece of Styrofoam that got lodged between two panels. At night she would dream about just finding random peanuts everywhere. In her coffee, in her hair, coming out of the shower head. Everywhere.

But right now, Eiffel was looking at Hilbert, who was covered in what seemed to be black scraps of sawdust. And not just Hilbert was covered, so was the entire room.

“What happened?”

“The ventilators overheated,” Hilbert said. “All the snowflakes caught on fire. I was barely able to…”

“ _Commander Minkowski is on her way to the cargo bay!_ ” Hera announced. “ _And she’s pretty pissed off._ ”

Barely five seconds later, Minkowski marched in, glistering with sweat. “Why aren’t you two…”

Her eyes flew from the charred snowflakes to the half-hearted banner, that happily read; ‘Merry Chris’, to the mess of Christmas decorations floating through the room, to the ventilator, that decided it would be ironic to literally explode the very instant Minkowski walked in.

Eiffel quickly slapped the Christmas hats on his and Hilbert’s heads and started singing: “Silent night, holy night!”

He elbowed Hilbert in the ribs, encouraging him to join.

“All is calm, all is rig- bright.” The two men shot each other confused looks, neither of them knew the exact lyrics.

Minkowski crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

“Round young virgin… mother and child…?” There was a slight question mark at the end of each sentence, “Sleep in heavenly peace, slee-heep in heavenly peace…”

An awkward silence fell between the three of them.

“M-merry Christmas, Commander,” Eiffel grinned. “As you can see, our…”

“We…” Hilbert interrupted him.

Minkowski kept a straight face for exactly four seconds, before bursting out into laughter. “You should have seen your faces!” She laughed, barely able to breathe. “I should be so mad at you two for wasting time and resources, but this is… I’m sorry guys…”

She took a deep breath, before looking up and laughing again. “And the Christmas carol… That was great. Just…” She took another deep breath, straightening herself out. “Okay. Just come on up to the kitchen. I made Christmas dinner and we’ll deal with this mess later. Or...” Minkowski shrugged. “You’ll deal with this mess later when I slip into my scheduled food coma.”

Eiffel opened his mouth to say something, but Minkowski shook her head.

“Don’t ruin the moment.” She squeezed his shoulder as he passed by. “Merry Christmas.”


End file.
